Greetings from Sydney, which for my money might be my favorite city in the world.
We arrived by bus Monday morning and beelined to the CBD Walrus Café, which I soon came to understand meant the restaurant was in the central business district, not that it served infused lattes.
In true aircrew fashion, we stopped in at a Scottish sports bar for a noon round to escape a rainstorm. The bar filled up with young professionals and a band of firefighters recently released from shift to the point that, at noon on a Monday, not an empty table remained. Australian bar culture impresses me.
As the sun emerged, we sauntered to the harbor and admired the exterior of the Sydney Opera House’s sails while quoting seagulls from Finding Nemo. Their quotes are not hard to recall. At 2:30, we began an interior tour, but I was disappointed that our English language guide was a soft-spoken German man and not an obnoxious Australian.
Tuesday morning, still jet lagged from a cocktail of time zone changes, long duty days, and whatever sleeping drugs and alcohol I’d consumed in the last 48 hours, I awoke well before sunrise and ran form Bondi Junction to the harbor. I reached the harbor by 6:15 and walked across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to admire the modest sunrise from the beneath the arched iron beams that mark the second architectural wonder of the neighborhood.
Later that morning, we all admired the harbor’s grandeur from a ferry en route to the Taronga Zoo. Despite May being “fall” in Australia, the sunny, 72 degree weather was picturesque for our short ferry trip.
We marveled at sunbathing kangaroos, sleeping koalas, and a little tiny platypus before setting off across the harbor to conclude our Sydney tour at Central Station, where we boarded a late, hot, rickety train back to Canberra.
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